Wednesday, May 29, 2013

As a reader, do you love to encounter a nasty villain now and then? So does Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl fantasy series. He recently listed his top 10 literary rogues in The Guardian("Eoin Colfer's Top Ten Villains," May 23, 2013). He even admits he finds them more interesting to write about in his own books than his heroes.Here are a few selections from his list:

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Since Memorial Day kicks off the beach and vacation season, we thought we’d share Publishers Weekly’s recent list of Best Summer Books 2013 in various genres. Whether you enjoy a good thriller, mystery, romance or nonfiction, here are a few selections from the list:

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Although weather has been a bit fickle here in the mid-Atlantic, there have been a few perfect days for gardening enthusiasts. But, at those times when turning the soil isn’t an option, GoodReads has compiled a list of Best Gardening Books to whet the appetite of any house-bound gardener.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby opens on Friday and to mark the occasion, USA Today has published "Five Reasons 'Gatsby' is the Great American Novel." When Fitzgerald died in 1940, he had only sold 25,000 copies, writes USA’s Deidre Donahue. Today it is currently the second top-seller in the U.S. It sells more than half a million copies each year.

Donahue offers these five reasons for the novel’s staying power. See if you agree.

1.At its heart, it is the most American of stories. Jay Gatsby is the iconic self-made man.

2.Set in “The Jazz Age,” the novel chronicles the hedonism of a fascinating era.

3.It’s complex characters seem relevant to each new generation of readers

4.The novel is about an intriguing obsessive, “crazy” love.

5.The prose, while sparse, is “imperishable.” As an example, Donahue quotes the novel’s final sentence: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

GQ recently published a list of the best in 21st-century fiction that its readers shouldn’t miss (“The New Canon: 21 Books From the 21st-Century Every Man Should Read,” April 8, 2013). “We spent months chiseling down a list of not just our favorite books from the 2000s,” the GQ editors wrote, “but also works of fiction we most readily recommend to our fathers, brothers, and non-blood-related bros.” We suspect none of the books on this list are gender-specific and may appeal to all readers of fine fiction. Here is a sampling: